Amechi Ogo, a 28-year-old father, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the defilement of his four-year-old daughter.
Gatekeepers News reports that Ogo was arraigned before the Delta State High Court sitting in Asaba for having unlawful carnal of his child at Asaba on 31st May 2018, which is contrary to Section 218 of the Criminal Code Law of Delta State.
The prosecution led by the Director of Sexual Offences Unit, Ministry of Justice, P.U. Akamagwuna told the Court that the Defendant came home on that fateful day and demanded sex from his wife. When his wife turned him down and left the house on an errand, the defendant forced himself on his four-year-old daughter.
Ogo who was caught in the act by a neighbour fled the scene.
The police subsequently arrested him and he made a confessional statement which was tendered in court.
During his trial, the defendant, however, retracted the confessional statement and denied committing the offence.
Justice Flora Ngozi Azinge, while delivering judgement on Wednesday 1st February 2023, held that the evidence of the four-year-old child and the witness, who caught him in the act, together with the defendant’s own confessional statement, proved beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the offence.
Justice Azinge held that the defence raised in the confessional statement of Ogo, to the effect that he lost all sense of reasoning after a native doctor laid hands on him and directed him to have sex with any woman he saw, was untenable and an afterthought.
The Judge described the defendant as a paedophile, whose conduct in defiling his own daughter was callous, animalistic, barbaric, and against the laws of God.
She added that society needed to be protected from persons like the defendant who prey on children.
The court thereafter sentenced Ogo to life imprisonment.
After the judgement, Akamagwuna said that the State Ministry of Justice will continue to aggressively prosecute all sex-related offenders in line with the ministry’s zero-tolerance policy for such heinous crimes.
The convict has since been registered in the Delta State Sex Offenders Register and his details have been uploaded to the national database.
